cross country – Newshttp://www.bates.edu/news
Tue, 15 Aug 2017 18:40:28 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.6‘Tremendous teammate’ Rob Gomez ’05 forgoes race victory to help a fallen runnerhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2017/08/10/tremendous-teammate-rob-gomez-05-forgoes-race-victory-to-help-a-fallen-runner/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2017/08/10/tremendous-teammate-rob-gomez-05-forgoes-race-victory-to-help-a-fallen-runner/#respondThu, 10 Aug 2017 18:50:27 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=108882With the finish of the world-class Beach to Beacon in sight, and a Maine title on the line, Gomez slowed to help a staggering fellow runner finish first.]]>

“That’s Robbie,” says Al Fereshetian.

Fereshetian, head coach of men’s cross country and track and field at Bates, was talking about Rob Gomez ’05 and the acclaim his former runner has earned for creating a defining moment at a prestigious Maine road race on Aug. 5.

With the finish line of the 10-kilometer TD Bank Beach to Beacon race in sight, Gomez slowed up to help a stricken fellow runner, Jesse Orach, get up and finish the race. Grimacing as he steadied Orach’s nearly dead weight, Gomez kept Orach, who was suffering from heat stroke, upright as he lurched the last few yards.

Although the pair were running in 22nd and 23rd place overall at the time, the stakes were still sky-high: Whoever finished ahead of the other would win the coveted men’s Maine-resident division of the race. And as they came to finish, Gomez stopped short and let Orach literally fall into first place. Then Gomez walked over the finish line, second.

Rob Gomez ’05 speaks to the Maine media after the Beach to Beacon on Aug. 5, 2017. (Photograph by Ann Kaplan)

The win was Orach’s second straight in the Maine division. For Gomez, who lives in Windham, the runner-up Maine finish was his best in 10 tries.

For helping the fallen runner, Gomez is being widely praised as a standup guy, and his deed — call it smart sportsmanship — has sizzled through social media and the news media.

Context matters, and this wasn’t your typical community road race filled with baby strollers and dogs. Founded by Olympic-gold marathoner Joan Benoit Samuelson, the Beach to Beacon attracts 6,800-plus runners each year, including Olympians and world champions who headline the 35-runner professional field.

And Gomez and Orach, both native Mainers, weren’t chugging along in 4,001st and 4002nd place, either.

Orach, a 2017 graduate of the University of Maine, was one of New England’s best college runners, and Gomez has been a top Maine road racer in recent years. He won the 2013 Maine Marathon and has two top-40 finishes at the Boston Marathon.

“Rob was running very, very well,” says Fereshetian. “His time, 31:31, is very fast.”

Coming around a final bend before the home stretch, Gomez only had a second or two to see that it was Orach on the ground and even less time to decide to pull him up. Still, his decision was an informed one.

“Rob respects and honors his sport,” Fereshetian says. “He knows exactly who he’s racing against. He and Jesse had just met the day before, but Rob knows exactly who Jesse is, and he know Jesse’s not just some guy he’s running next to.”

Like many great competitors, Gomez is a student of his sport. “Going into the race, you understand the runner’s body of work. You understand what he’s done,” Gomez says. “Jesse had a very good spring track year at UMaine. He was the favorite, and I was maybe his best competition.”

The race played out that way. “The first mile, I stuck with him,” Gomez says. “Then he pulled away. As a runner, I’ve done enough of these to know that it wasn’t going to be my day.”

Gomez looks at it this way. “Jesse’s performance needed to get the respect that it deserved.” Had Gomez passed Orach by, the result would “have been a hollow victory. I would have lamented the fact that I had won; it would have left a bad taste had I won in that manner.”

Since Saturday, Gomez has played out other scenarios in his mind. Of course, he’d have “no problem beating the pants off him in normal fashion.” And if the two had been neck and neck, “if I had fought to be that close, and if it was my race to win, I would have won it” and let Orach fall by the wayside.

“But within 100 yards from the finish [helping him] was the only thing to do. Because I believed, and still believe, that he had won the race.”

“Rob deserves a medal for what he did, but knowing Rob, he’d never wear it.”

Gomez has downplayed what he did, telling WCSH-TV that “I’m just a normal representative of what the Maine running community is all about,” and telling the Portland Press Herald that “maybe they don’t carry someone, but everyone wants others to succeed.”

Though he professes normalcy, Gomez does run to the beat of a different drummer, and he’s well-known for his distinctively generous, intense, and modest demeanor. As Samuelson told me, “Rob deserves a medal for what he did, but knowing Rob, he’d never wear it.”

“He’s very intense and focused about everything, and he was also one of the biggest supporters and cheerleaders for everyone on our team,” says Mike Downing ’05, a fellow runner at Bates who now owns Mount Chase Lodge on Maine’s Upper Shin Pond.

And while generous acts like Gomez’s occur on occasion in road races, “it’s not going to happen in most running races,” Fereshetian says. When it does happen, “it’s usually the result of the people and personalities involved,” Fereshetian suggests.

Rob Gomez ’05 runs for Bates as a sophomore in 2002. (Daryn Slover for Bates College)

In that sense, “Rob was a tremendous teammate who cared deeply about the guys on our team,” Fereshetian says. “And I’m sure his teammates would say there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for them.”

Downing agrees. “Rob is a great person and friend, and what he did has to do with the person he is.” In other words, the choice to help Orach is not a one-size-fits-all decision. “While it’s hard to say what I would have done, I would have probably decided to win the race and let the medical staff handle the situation,” says Downing. Alluding to the fact that runners can be DQ’d for helping or being helped, Downing believes that approach would be “the fair thing to do for everyone involved in the race.”

To be sure, Gomez’s deed probably reflects a mixture of Gomez’s personality and the culture of long-distance running, which is marked as much by camaraderie as by solo effort.

Beginning in high school and continuing to college, runners, especially cross country runners, “gain a strong sense of team,” Fereshetian says. After college, “in open road races, the only way to get that fellowship and that camaraderie is to recognize that in some form or another, that competitor next to you is your teammate, too. And I think that Rob carries that with him.”

A native of Waldoboro, Gomez majored in chemistry at Bates and was inducted into the Sigma Xi scientific research society as a senior. Today, he’s senior manufacturing engineer at General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems in Saco. Interestingly, Orach is also an engineer, at the Verso paper mill in Jay, Maine.

For his part, Orach, whose post-race body core temperature was reported to be 107.3 degrees, accepted his victory with grace. “I’m speechless with what he did,” he told the Press Herald, especially because the duo “was kind of vying for that No. 1 Mainer spot, and for him to give that up for me is pretty remarkable.” A bit more than bragging rights was at stake. Orach gets $1,000 for the win, and Gomez $500 for second. (Orach has said he wants Beach to Beacon to combine and split the first and second prize money evenly between the two.)

Joan Samuelson, a Bowdoin grad, parent of a 2010 Bates alumna, and recipient of a Bates honorary degree in 2015, addressed the intersection of winning and sportsmanship. Gomez’ gesture both epitomizes and transcends the sport, she says. “It showcases the very best of the human spirit.”

To be sure, “winning a race is a feather in one’s cap,” she says. “But carrying one to victory deserves a medal of honor that only a few people earn during their lifetime. Rob’s contributions to our sport should have been heralded long ago. His mentoring of young and aspiring athletes has been steadfast, unyielding, passionate, and inspiring.”

In addition to his day job at General Dynamics, Gomez has a running business, Eastern Shore Training, which provides online coaching and training plans for runners. He’s served as vice president and president of the board for Dirigo Racing Club, a premier road-racing club.

“At Bates, Rob loved running with a passion. And it’s great to see him being so engaged in the running community,” Fereshetian says.

Bates photographer and videographer Mike Bradley, a former collegiate runner himself, traveled with the men’s and women’s cross country teams to the NCAA Division III Championships in November. Here, he offers behind-the-scenes stories that capture the mindset of Bates’ elite runners as they head into intense national competition.

In various realms, the Bates psychology department provides robust service to their discipline and, by extension, the people and communities they engage with. That service has earned Bates top honors from the American Psychological Association.

Following President Clayton Spencer’s installationon Oct. 26, she is now embarking on a series of visits to Bates alumni, parents and friends, the first of which were in Hartford, Boston and New York City. Coming up in early 2013 are Welcome Events in Washington, D.C. (Feb. 6), Chicago (March 5) and Seattle (March 7).

A hospital visit isn’t high on anyone’s list of compelling moments, but for 23 Bates students in a 100-level course, heading to St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center is part of a course curriculum designed to attract students to physics.

6. Did you know? Goosie and the peat bog

In the winter of 1917–18, the U.S faced a coal shortage caused by botched federal attempts to regulate national fuel distribution during World War I. With alternative fuels on the minds of many, Professor of Greek George Millett Chase told the Lewiston Evening Journal that the city should mine peat from Garcelon Bog, about a mile east of campus. The bog, said the professor nicknamed “Goosie,” could yield enough energy “to heat all [Lewiston’s] homes for one thousand years.”

In recent interviews with public radio, Professor of Sociology Emily Kane, author of The Gender Trap, emphasizes a theme of her new book: While parents often try to lead their children into experiences beyond gender stereotypes, social pressure pushes parents back into traditional attitudes and actions.

Though college offices are closed Dec. 24 through Jan. 1, those wanting to make year-end gifts by phone, or needing to ask gift questions, including instructions for securities transfers, will have help. The toll-free Bates gift line, 1-888-522-8371, will be staffed Wednesday-Friday, Dec. 26-28, from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; and on Monday, Dec. 31, until 9 p.m. Our Advancement colleagues tell us that uncertainty around fiscal cliff discussions and possible tax changes in 2013 have prompted some donors to make their annual gifts before the end of calendar 2012.

In a letter to The New York Times, Dana Professor of Anthropology Danny Danforth takes issue with characterizations in the new book On Saudi Arabia. The landmark astrophotography exhibition at the Museum of Art garners another glowing review, this time in the Maine Sunday Telegram. Lena Sene ’00, considered an expert in private equity investing in Africa, is named one of the most influential women in corporate America by Savoy Magazine.

Bates photographer and videographer Mike Bradley produced this audio slide show about the competitiveness, camaraderie and mutual respect of the women’s cross country team as it treks to Terre Haute, Ind., for the 2012 NCAA Division III Championships on Nov. 17.

In his first semester at Bates after transferring from Vanderbilt University, sophomore Devin Dilts capped an impressive debut season with the Bobcat men’s cross country team on Saturday at the New England Division III Cross Country Championships, hosted by Williams College.

Dilts (Roscoe, Ill.) covered the 8-kilometer course at Mt. Greylock High School in 26:57.1, good for 25th place overall out of 331 runners. Dilts’ time was the third-fastest ever run at the Williams course by a Bates man. Dilts was also the second sophomore in the entire field to cross the finish line. For his top-35 performance, Dilts captured All-Region honors, while junior teammate Doug Brecher (Waban, Mass.) missed repeating as All-New England by finishing in 36th place, just one-tenth of a second out of 35th.

Something about the New England Division III Regional Cross Country Championships seems to bring out the best in Bates junior Esther Kendall. For the second straight year, Kendall picked New Englands to lead the Bates women’s cross country team for the first time all season.

Kendall (Ridgeway, Ontario) led a team performance that showcased impressive depth and balance, as the Bobcats, who entered the race ranked No. 10 in New England, placed eighth out of 49 teams. Kendall finished 43rd out of 330 runners in the race at Williams College’s home course, covering the 6 kilometers in a time of 24:16.8, meanwhile edging out a pack of teammates who were close behind, including sophomore Liz Rowley (Evanston, Ill.) in 47th at 24:25.3, sophomore Alex Alberto (Concord, Mass.) in 50th at 24:27.3, sophomore Chloe Bourne (Litchfield, Conn.) in 54th at 24:34.4, junior Abby Samuelson (Freeport, Maine) in 74th at 24:55.3 and senior Allie Goldstein (Needham, Mass.) in 76th at 24:56.4.

At last year’s New Englands, Kendall was placed 47th out of 344 runners, again leading a tight pack of Bobcats, as Bates finished in ninth place.

Devin Dilts ’11 made a splash in his first collegiate 8-kilometer race on Saturday, running the fourth-fastest time for a Bates male at Tufts University’s home course in Grafton, Mass., at the annual Jumbo Invitational.

Dilts (Roscoe, Ill.), who transferred to Bates from Vanderbilt University this fall, crossed the finish line in 27:20.22 and placed fourth overall out of 84 competitors in the 8K, which was run on an adjusted course that likely measures a bit more than 8,000 meters. The Bobcats finished third out of 10 teams in the race, and Dilts earned NESCAC Men’s Cross Country Performer of the Week honors.

Bates next competes at the Wesleyan Invitational on Sept. 27.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2008/09/15/dilts-2/feed/0Walter Slovenski, legendary track and cross country coach, dies at 79http://www.bates.edu/news/1999/09/08/walter-slovenski/
http://www.bates.edu/news/1999/09/08/walter-slovenski/#respondWed, 08 Sep 1999 05:00:48 +0000http://home.bates.edu/?p=21911Legendary Bates College track and cross country coach Walter Slovenski, 79, died Sept. 8 at Central Maine Medical Center, surrounded by his family, after a long battle with cancer.

Slovenski, who retired from Bates in 1995 after 43 years of coaching, led his Bobcat track and cross country teams to 726 victories, five undefeated seasons, more than 20 State of Maine championships and four New England regional championships.

A memorial service will be held at the Bates Chapel on Sept. 24 at 4 p.m. followed by a reception at the Benjamin E. Mays Center on campus.

At a Sept. 4 campus ceremony attended by several hundred Bates alumni, faculty and staff members, students, friends and Slovenski family members, Bates College dedicated the indoor track at Merrill Gymnasium in honor of Slovenski.

“Walter Slovenski’s years of service to Bates and his commitment to his family, to his student-athletes, to the importance of competition, and to achievement are all emblematic of the highest standards and expectations,” Bates President Donald W. Harward said at Saturday’s ceremony. “Bates is proud to have had the opportunity to be influenced by his decades of dedication, professionalism and humane good will.”

Slovenski combined competitive zeal, deep care for his student-athletes and a spirited sense of humor and fun to bring out the best in his performers.

“The Slovenski name is synonymous with track and field excellence,” Director of Athletics Suzanne Coffey said at the dedication. “Whether watching him chase alongside and cajole an athlete, or seeing him offer a word of advice and encouragement to a younger coach in the department, it was easy to see the fire in this man’s competitiveness and the humor in his soul. The Slovenski legacy is unparalleled.”

Born April 13, 1920, in Dupont, Pa., Slovenski left school after the seventh grade to join his father as a coal miner. One day, a local high school track coach, Jack Daugherty, saw Slovenski perform at a local summer field day and convinced his parents to enroll him in high school. A star athlete at Cherry Hill (Pa.) High School who led his football team to a 10-0 record in 1939, Slovenski was later the national prep school long jump champion at Seton Hall Prep.

After spending three and a half years in the Navy, Slovenski attended Syracuse University. While there, Slovenski was an All-America baseball player, a two-way football player whose name still appears in the Orangemen’s record books, and a member of the track and field teams, competing in the long jump and high jump.

At the Sept. 4 ceremony, Auburn resident and former Bates assistant track coach Allen Harvie, a 1965 Bates graduate, read remarks written by Slovenski, who was too ill to attend. “The Bates community helped Ruth and me raise six children,” Slovenski wrote. “I’d like to thank every Bates track athlete for enrolling at Bates and making such terrific contributions to our track team. Everything I ever accomplished I have to give credit to Jack Daugherty. I learned through him the lessons of sports, the great joy of helping others through athletics. He single-handedly transformed my life.”

After graduating from Syracuse in 1949, Slovenski earned a master’s degree at New York University and coached track at Oneonta State College for two years before coming to Bates in 1952 as assistant football and head track coach. From 1957 to 1960, Bates compiled a 30-meet winning streak, including victories over schools like Boston University, the University of Connecticut and the University of Maine. The Bobcats’ state track titles in 1957 and 1958 were their first since 1912.

In 1958, Slovenski resurrected the long-dormant Bates cross country program and built it, too, into a consistent winner, posting a 9-1 record by 1963 and winning the first four New England Small College Athletic Conference championships between 1983 and 1986.

Slovenski produced 26 All-Americans, including five national champions. Slovenski’s track and cross country teams produced the highest finishes by any Bates team at an NCAA championship, placing fifth at the indoor track and field meet in 1989 and sixth at the cross country championships in 1977.

Slovenski has been inducted into the Clearfield County (Pa.), Indiana (Pa.) and Lewiston Auburn Sports Halls of Fame, as well as the Maine Running Hall of Fame. He was honored as a New England and NCAA cross country coach of the year. In the 1960s, Slovenski was selected by the Mexican government to upgrade that country’s track programs in preparation for the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. A competitor in the World Veterans’ track and field championships in 1989, Slovenski placed sixth in the hammer throw with a toss of 123 feet, 6 inches.

He will always be loved dearly by his wife, children and grandchildren for his own magnificent heart and love of family.

Slovenski is survived by his wife of nearly 49 years, Ruth; three sons, Peter Slovenski of Brunswick, Paul Slovenski of Cambridge, Mass., and Steven Slovenski of Lee, N.H.; three daughters, Patty Slovenski Gannon of Framingham, Mass., Sally Slovenski of Watertown, Mass., and Sue Slovenski Pucko of Webster, N.Y.; and 11 grandchildren.

Gifts in memory of Walter Slovenski can be made to Bates College, 2 Andrews Road, Lewiston ME 04240.